Always You

by Roxie Noir

  “I can’t fucking call the prison and say ‘do whatever you want with his body.’ He was my brother, I fucking owe him better than that.”

  “Why?” I ask softly.

  I nearly say you remember that he killed someone, right? But I keep my mouth shut.

  “Because Eli’s my little brother!” Trent nearly shouts.

  “Yeah, and he made you feel awful for years and he blamed you because he was in prison and you know that if he could have somehow gotten you to take the fall, he would have,” I say. “Why the fuck does he deserve this from you? He doesn’t, he’s never done anything but take from you so let them bury him in a pine box. He’d do it to you.”

  I know that there’s something at work here that I can’t quite grasp, some emotional gut-punch that I’m seeing but don’t know how to feel.

  But I’ve watched Trent worry over his brother for years, and I’ve watched him beat himself up whenever Eli calls, give his little brother whatever he can. Pay for lawyers, for cigarettes, drive up from Los Angeles once a month to visit him in in prison.

  And I hate it. I hate that Eli’s been nothing but a drain on Trent the whole time I’ve known him, and now that he’s dead, he’s still a drain and Trent won’t just let him go.

  “It doesn’t matter,” Trent says, his voice strange and baffled.

  And he just looks at me, a look I’ve never seen on his face before. Like he’s never really seen me before.

  “You can’t understand,” he finally says.

  “I understand that Eli’s made you miserable for as long as I’ve known you,” I say, trying to keep my voice gentle, even though I’m pissed. Mostly at Eli.

  “That’s how you can sit here and tell me to let my brother rot in the middle of nowhere surrounded by people no one loved enough to bury right,” he says. “You haven’t got a family. You haven’t got anyone you’d do this for.”

  I open my mouth, silently. Then I close it, because I haven’t got a response.

  “That’s how you can be fucking heartless,” he says. “You haven’t got a clue how it feels to have a sibling, to grow up with someone and then lose them.”

  He says it quietly but his voice is shaking with rage.

  “You’ve got a black fucking hole where your heart goes,” he says, low and flat. “Just leave.”

  I don’t know what the hell happened. I didn’t think my suggestion was that bad, but here’s Trent in front of me, furious and glowering and looking at me like I’m the scum of the earth, and I feel like I can barely breathe.

  Mechanically, I stand. I turn and I walk out of the hotel room, and I don’t think I even say goodbye, just let the door close after me, and my feet carry me to the elevator, to the lobby, outside into the Boston summer sunshine.

  I stand there, and I stare, and I wonder how the fuck I’m supposed to fix this.

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Trent

  I call the prison morgue back, tell them to hold onto Eli until tomorrow. I call the other cemetery in Low Valley, the one where my mother hasn’t got plots already, and I reserve one though they refuse to go through with the transaction until I’ve seen it in person.

  I book a flight into Bakersfield. It gets in after midnight, I’ve got two layovers, and it’s nearly two thousand dollars, but I don’t give a shit.

  And I fold everything that I just said to Darcy into the bigger misery wrenching at my gut. I just add it to the pile of horrible things to feel miserable about, because after all I’ve got twelve-odd hours on planes and in airports to feel as low as I can, why start now?

  I’ll regret it. I knew I’d regret it when I said it but I couldn’t stop myself, and now I’m going to fucking pay.

  I call Nigel from the cab to Logan airport, but he’s already working on postponing our next couple of shows. It’s not the first time I’ve been fucking relieved to talk to him.

  The airport is miserable. It’s a fucking airport. I get selected for an extra pat-down at security and nearly miss my flight, so I don’t even have time to pick up a trashy thriller from the airport bookstore and I spend the first leg, from Boston to Chicago, listening to my iPod and wishing I could stop thinking.

  But I can’t. Every fucking time I close my eyes his face is there: making mudpies in our dusty backyard with the hose until our father came out and yelled at us. Riding our bikes around one of the empty lots in Low Valley — there were plenty to choose from — the time my wheels slipped and I went flying into the concrete foundation of a building that never got built, breaking my arm.

  How Eli was the one who stayed with me while I cried, sending one of our friends to get my mom.

  Us, older. Me maybe fourteen, him maybe twelve. The first time he backtalked my dad for hitting my mom and my dad cracked him across the face. He said he’d fallen off his bike the next day at school and I felt fucking awful and powerless, even though I was still afraid of my dad.

  Eli stealing candy bars and sharing them with me. Eli, always a little more of a troublemaker, showing me how to get into the storm drains where we smoked pot together after school sometimes.

  Bottle rockets in the desert. Finding an old wreck of a dirt bike and fixing it up just well enough to jump it off piles of hard-packed desert rock. Sneaking out, stealing my dad’s truck, and driving into Bakersfield for the night.

  God, we got beat for that one.

  And finally, that night. I was seventeen, he was fifteen, and after my mom — his favorite punching bag — my dad went after Eli, and I got in his way.

  We land in Chicago. I’ve got five minutes to spare so I grab the dumbest paperback I can find, get on another plane. Read some bullshit until Denver, where I’ve got four hours so I eat some Tex-Mex and try not to think, but the thoughts of my little brother are sometimes punctuated by Darcy’s face, the look on it when I told her she had a black hole.

  Fuck. Fuck.

  I put her away, think about tequila shots, but I don’t. Instead I pace the airport until I get on the next plane and a few hours later, at last, we land at tiny Meadows Field airport.

  Outside is palm trees and dust, the day’s oppressive heat still lingering in the air, and I hate it but it feels like home.

  Doesn’t mean I have to like it.

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Darcy

  I show up at the theater at five for sound check, like I’m supposed to. Even though we’re doing two nights in the same place, something we do sometimes in big cities, we usually do sound check twice. Better safe than sorry.

  But instead of finding people inside, there are papers stuck to every door:

  DIRTSHINE SHOW RESCHEDULED

  WE APOLOGIZE FOR THE INCONVENIENCE

  I stare at it for a moment, uncomprehending. I’ve been wandering around Boston all day, unsure where to go or what to fucking do, feeling awful and guilty and a little self-righteous and more than anything, like I’m a clueless idiot and like I fucked something up and I don’t understand how.

  I pull out my phone to call Nigel, only to find thirty-two missed calls from him, seventeen from Gavin, and five from Joan.

  “Hey,” Gavin says when I call him. “No show tonight, but we’re at this place called Emilio’s. Around the corner from the hotel. Come down.”

  Emilio’s is a low-key Italian joint with checkered table cloths, cheesy decor, and an extensive menu. Gavin, Joan, and Nigel are all sitting in a huge booth in the back with a basket of breadsticks, a massive salad, and drinks.

  “Right,” Nigel’s saying, one hand around his whiskey. “I haven’t rescheduled the Washington, D.C. Shows yet so with any luck at all, we’ll be able to make those. They’re still six days away, and it’s only about a twelve hour drive so frankly, maybe we should simply head out of Boston tomorrow, that way we won’t have to hurry and we could even get a spot of sightseeing in as we drive...”

  I grab a breadstick and tear into it, my stomach suddenly growling. I’m not sure I’ve eaten anything since my breakfas
t pastry. I’m not really paying attention to Nigel going on about sightseeing in New Jersey or whatever the hell he’s talking about, I’m just stuffing my face and trying not to feel awful.

  “If it’s going to be much longer than that, I’d rather fly home for a couple of days,” Gavin says.

  “Same,” Joan agrees. “Boston is nice, but I like seeing my husband, too.”

  I grab another breadstick and shrug at Nigel, because I don’t really care right now. Mainly, I’m fucking hungry, and besides that, I don’t want to think.

  “Did he say when he might be back?” Gavin asks.

  “He didn’t know just yet,” Nigel says. “It sounds as if the arrangements are turning out to be quite a chore—”

  “Back?” I say around a mouthful of bread. “From where?”

  Three pairs of eyes look at me, suddenly awkward. Joan and Gavin glance at each other, and then Gavin leans forward a little.

  “He flew back to California this afternoon,” he says. “To arrange the funeral and everything.”

  I stop. My brain stops. After a long second, I finish chewing, swallow, and blink at Gavin.

  “He left?”

  “At one-thirteen,” Nigel offers, looking at his phone. “He doesn’t get in to Bakersfield until twelve thirty, poor man has two layovers—”

  “He already left,” I say. “He’s gone. Out of Boston.”

  “Right,” Gavin says.

  I flatten my palms on the table, processing this.

  Trent left without telling me. He’s flying across the country to bury his brother and he didn’t tell me he was going, he just went.

  I know it’s not forever. I know he’s coming back, but finding out now, hours later, from Gavin fucking stings.

  “Oh,” I say.

  “Sorry, I thought he’d have told you,” Nigel says, lifting his whiskey to his lips. “I’d have mentioned it earlier in one of the six voicemails I left you, but I assumed you already knew.”

  “It’s fine,” I say, and grab another breadstick. I shove it into my mouth as I stand.

  “Are you leaving?” Gavin says.

  “Yeah, I gotta go.”

  “Stay and eat,” Joan says. “The lasagna here is supposed to be amazing, and...”

  I don’t catch the rest of her sentence, just shake my head and walk out of Emilio’s, back into the night. I’m still starving but I don’t feel like I can face them, not now, not like this.

  I know it’s not a huge thing that he flew somewhere in an emergency, but for some reason it feels fucking cataclysmic. I can’t remember that last time that Nigel knew something about Trent that I didn’t. I can’t remember the last time anyone knew something about Trent that I didn’t, and that’s what feels like cold lead boiling in my ribcage.

  We fought, and he left, I think.

  We fought, he left.

  There’s only so many ways to parse that, and they’re all fucking wretched.

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Trent

  I slide the rental car into a spot marked VISITOR, and then I sit in the driver’s seat for a moment. Then another one, looking out over the suburban low, flat, sprawling houses, the over-green lawns, the palms trees standing bolt upright at regular intervals. There’s even a golf course just out of sight, all this green and pleasant in a way that the dusty valley floor probably shouldn’t be.

  We’re twenty miles from where I grew up, but now I’m in a different world.

  I take a deep breath. I rub my eyes, my eyelids like sandpaper against them. I did manage to shower this morning in my hotel room, even if I didn’t really sleep last night either thanks to the gnawing ache in my chest.

  Eli’s gone. He’s gone. Not just in prison, but really gone.

  I open the car door into the heat before I can talk myself out of it, get out, and walk toward Sunset Acres Assisted Living. Like everything else here, in the nice part of Bakersfield, it’s a low, sprawling building with lush green lawns, palm trees, and a Spanish tile roof. I put her in here after we first made it big, before I even bought myself a house.

  Anything to get her out of the leaking, rotting trailer where she was living alone.

  I check in at the front desk, grab a nametag, and the receptionist calls my mom’s nurse that day. She’s a short Filipina woman named Isabel, and I’ve already told her everything.

  “I’m so sorry,” she says, when she first sees me.

  “Thanks,” I say automatically. “How’s she doing?”

  My mom doesn’t know yet. I didn’t want to tell her over the phone, especially knowing that I’d just have to tell her again when I got here.

  And then again every half hour, for God knows how long.

  “To be honest, Gwen’s had a string of bad days lately,” Isabel says, like she’s steeling herself. “Her seizures have gotten a little more frequent, though they’re not worse. And her memory loss... well, it’s not improving.”

  Fuck. I haven’t called my mom in two weeks, and even though I’ve got excuses, none of them are good enough. Fifteen minutes is all it takes, and then she’ll be happy for the next twenty that she remembers I called.

  “Anything else I should know?” I ask grimly, outside my mom’s door.

  “Just try to be patient,” Isabel says gently. “Anything you tell her, she won’t remember until you repeat it ten, maybe fifteen times.”

  I stare the door, number 1168. I’m going to have to tell my mom her youngest child is dead ten, maybe fifteen times, and every time is going to be like the first for her.

  I knock.

  “Come in!” I hear my mom’s voice call. I look down at Isabel, who puts one hand on my arm and nods. I’m glad that there’s someone in this world who appreciates how hard what I’m about to do is, and I push the door open into my mom’s suite.

  She’s sitting in a high-backed chair with floral upholstery, a delicate coffee table in front of her with a doily and a teacup sitting on top.

  As soon as she sees me, she practically leaps to her feet, her hands twisting nervously in front of herself.

  “Stan,” she says, her voice brittle with anxiety.

  I stop in the doorway, suddenly nauseated even though this isn’t the first time this has happened. I know I look a lot like my dad, that we move the same way, that we have the same gestures, but it still nearly knocks me over.

  “I’m Trent,” I tell her.

  She exhales, her shoulders slumping, and peers at me, her whole body a picture of relief.

  “Of course you are,” she says, walking toward me. “I’m so sorry, I don’t know what got into me! What a pleasant surprise, dear.”

  We hug. She asks me how the drive in was, isn’t it just hot as the dickens today, would I like some orange juice or maybe a diet coke. She’s still good at this kind of small talk, the things that don’t require specific knowledge, the conversations she can have by rote.

  I take a glass of water, sit in a floral chair opposite hers, and I know I have to do it now or I might lose my nerve.

  “Mom,” I say, as gently as I can. “Eli is dead.”

  For one long, terrible second, my mom just stares at me, mouth open, eyes wide.

  Then she just crumples. Her whole body slumps and collapses and she slides to the floor. I can’t stand in time to catch her, but in a moment, I’m kneeling next to her, arm around her shoulders, trying to hold her up.

  I just gave her a seizure, I think. Fuck, I should have asked Isabel to come in with me, I didn’t think this would happen—

  “Eli,” my mom gasps. “My God, Trent, not him. Not my baby. Not my baby.”

  I know there’s nothing I can say, so I don’t, I just close my eyes and rest my cheek on the top of my mom’s head, letting her sob in my arms. I’ve seen my mom go through a lot of bad, bad shit, but I think this might be the worst.

  This is one, I think.

  We’re on the floor for a long, long time. She soaks through my shirt with tears, and I just sit there, roc
king her back and forth, wishing I could do something or say something that would make it better, but I can’t.

  After ten minutes, maybe more, she sniffles, looks up at me.

  “Was he hit by a car?” she asks.

  After he got out of prison the first time, Eli worked construction with a county road crew. I see what Isabel means about her memory, because she’s forgotten that Eli was behind bars again.

  “He was killed,” I say, and explain, as gently as I can. She’s quiet the whole time, still crying softly. She gets the hiccups before I finish.

  “Where did I go wrong?” she asks, when I’m done telling her what I know.

  I don’t have answer for that either, and we go quiet again.

  After a while, my mom sits up straight. She grabs a tissue, dries her eyes, and from the spark in her I can tell she’s starting to forget. That she still knows something bad happened, that I’m there for an ugly reason, but I don’t think she knows what it is any more.

  She stands, clears the teacup from the table. I can tell she’s confused, that she knows she’s forgetting something, like why she’s crying, why I’m sitting on the floor, but too embarrassed to say anything.

  So I sit again. She offers me tea and I accept, and we spend a few minutes chatting pleasantly. She asks me vague questions about my life and I answer. I ask her how her Thursday night salsa classes here are going, and she laughs, says she never was so popular in her younger days.

  I wonder if she knows what I’m talking about.

  She sits. We sip tea as the knot in my stomach tightens. I know the second time is coming like a freight train, barreling down the track toward me now.

  “Speaking of which,” she says, taking a sip. “Have you talked to Eli lately?”

  I have to tell my mom three more times, and when I leave Sunset Acres it isn’t even noon yet. I’m already wrung out and exhausted, because telling my mom once was pretty bad. Watching her find out Eil was dead over and over again? That was fucking next-level.